HOW OLD THE EARTH IS?

[Alex2165]

HOW OLD THE EARTH IS?

 

Actually no one can give any reasonable answer to this question. According to the “scientists” the Earth is millions of years old and their estimates vary from one extreme to another without any reasonable proof.

 

And the one of the reasons they doing it, is to discredit the Biblical account about creation of the Earth and the universe.

 

So I looked at the Bible much closely and I found that it is actually possible, at least very approximately, to figure it out of how old the Earth really is.

 

Genesis 5 has a reference of 10 generation of the pre-flood time, starting from Adam and ends on the Noah who at that time when flood came was 600 years old.

 

I am not good with math, but I tried, and when I counted all that 10 pre-flood generations I came up with 9.133 years from Adam to Noah, which is seems to me to be a right number.

So the entire pre-flood era from the creation of Adam and to the actual flood was about 9.000 years.

 

After that I took look at Genesis 11 and started count another 10 generations from Shem to Abraham, and I came up with 2.526 years. So adding 9.000 and 2.526, all together we have approximately between 11.000 and 12.000 years from Adam to Abraham.

 

According to majority of the Bibles, the Biblical chronology dates Abraham to 1.900 B.C. So if we add this number of 1.900 to our time, roughly 2.000 years after Christ, we will come up with 3.900, which we can round to 4.000 for easy calculation.

 

And so, adding 12.000 years from Adam to Abraham, and 2.000 years from Abraham to Christ, and another 2.000 from Christ to our time, we have some 16.000 years all together, plus and minus all the discrepancies, small mistakes, and uncertain periods of time.

 

According to the Jewish calendar we live in the year 5.778. I think they started their account from the Abraham. According to majority of the Bibles, the Biblical chronology dates Abraham to 1.900 B.C.

 

Because years and dates in the Old Testament have gaps and unknown periods of time in its context, to pinpoint the exact number of years from Abraham to our time is practically impossible.

 

But I believe that Jewish account have a close number to reality, so I am sure that they meticulously and carefully counted all possible dates and times in the Old Testament to come up with this number of years, 5.778.

 

And there is another interesting thing I found in the creation of the physical world. In Genesis 1.14-19, there is described the Day 4, in which GOD created Sun and Moon and the stars, I found that the Sun and the Moon are mentioned first, and then the stars of the universe, and it seems to me that the whole universe was created after the Sun and the Moon were created.

 

If this is the case, this also means that the Earth and the Universe have the same age, because all of them have been created on the same 4^th Day!

 

And this account has another interesting thing in it that the counts of days as Moses described them can only be started from that Day 4, because without the light of the Sun and the Moon there is no day or night, and account of time is practically impossible, unless we use stars, but even stars have not been created yet, because the Sun and the Moon have been created first.

 

This means that up to Day 4, very first 3 Days of creation were are not really Days as we used to know them, but it looks like that where was some sort of period of times in the process of creation by GOD of unknown to us origin.

 

 

[frienduff thaylorde]

2 hours ago, Butero said:

There is no way to be 100 percent certain of the age of the earth, but my best guess is close to 6000 years.  There is one way the earth could be much older and not go against the Bible, and that is if someone believes in the gap theory, that there was a period of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, another age where the dinosaurs and cave men lived, and God destroyed them and started over.  I used to believe that myself, but more recently, I have moved back into the young earth camp.  The earth was effected by Noah's flood, and traditional methods of dating things are unreliable as a result.  

Anyway, young earth, old earth, either way, I can reconcile both to the Genesis account of creation, but I lean towards a young earth.  I suspect that we are in the year 5990.  I would bet you didn't expect a number that precise when you asked that question.  

You loved my brother in Christ .  So praise the LORD .     Onward by His grace reminding all of the hope we have IN CHRIST .

 

[JohnD]

Time itself is no accurate measure of how long the earth has been here. It dilates. The greater a gravity well (for example) the slower time passes. And my guess is where there is an upwelling of space itself time goes much faster. If our solar system passed close to a gravity well much larger than our sun, for another example, our time though appearing normal would pass much more slowly.

Relative to us? Evolutionists claim the Earth is billions of years old, but they cannot prove their claim. If memory serves (I have not argued this in some time) radio carbon dating measuring the decay of certain isotopes is the most accurate dating method... but it only works on certain materials and is only good for some 5000 years past. The rest is mathematical conjecture. Best to rely on someone who was there and saw the events of history from the beginning of Earth to now. We can consult his eyewitness testimony in the Bible.

[BeyondET]

One breath old and still in exhale at that, imagine that.

[BeyondET]

On April 9, 2018 at 8:00 PM, JohnD said:

Time itself is no accurate measure of how long the earth has been here. It dilates. The greater a gravity well (for example) the slower time passes. And my guess is where there is an upwelling of space itself time goes much faster. If our solar system passed close to a gravity well much larger than our sun, for another example, our time though appearing normal would pass much more slowly.

Relative to us? Evolutionists claim the Earth is billions of years old, but they cannot prove their claim. If memory serves (I have not argued this in some time) radio carbon dating measuring the decay of certain isotopes is the most accurate dating method... but it only works on certain materials and is only good for some 5000 years past. The rest is mathematical conjecture. Best to rely on someone who was there and saw the events of history from the beginning of Earth to now. We can consult his eyewitness testimony in the Bible.

Radio carbon dating is not the most accurate and is used to date charcoal, wood, and other biological materials. 

U/Pb dating is more accurate than radio carbon dating and relies upon the decay of naturally occurring uranium and different isotopes of lead.

as well there are about a dozen or more other methods of dating. You say the rest is mathancial conjecture clearly you know nothing about the topic.

Dating methods

Dating techniques are procedures used by scientists to determine the age of a specimen. Relative dating methods tell only if one sample is older or younger than another sample; absolute dating methods provide a date in years. The latter have generally been available only since 1947. Many absolute dating techniques take advantage of radioactive decay, whereby a radioactive form of an element is converted into another radioactive isotope or non-radioactive product at a regular rate. Others, such as amino acid racimization and cation-ratio dating, are based on chemical changes in the organic or inorganic composition of a sample. In recent years, a few of these methods have undergone continual refinement as scientists strive to develop the most accurate dating techniques possible.

Relative dating methods determine whether one sample is older or younger than another. They do not provide an age in years. Before the advent of absolute dating methods, nearly all dating was relative. The main relative dating method is stratigraphy.

Stratigraphy is the study of layers of rocks or the objects embedded within those layers. It is based on the assumption (which, except at unconformities , nearly always holds true) that deeper layers were deposited earlier, and thus are older than more shallow layers. The sequential layers of rock represent sequential intervals of time. Although these units may be sequential, they are not necessarily continuous due to erosional removal of some intervening units. The smallest of these rock units that can be matched to a specific time interval is called a bed. Beds that are related are grouped together into members, and members are grouped into formations.

Seriation is the ordering of objects according to their age. It is a relative dating method. In a landmark study, archaeologist James Ford used seriation to determine the chronological order of American Indian pottery styles in the Mississippi Valley. Artifact styles such as pottery types are seriated by analyzing their abundances through time. This is done by counting the number of pieces of each style of the artifact in each stratigraphic layer and then graphing the data. A layer with many pieces of a particular style will be represented by a wide band on the graph, and a layer with only a few pieces will be represented by a narrow band. The bands are arranged into battleship-shaped curves, with each style getting its own curve. The curves are then compared with one another, and from this the relative ages of the styles are determined. A limitation to this method is that it assumes all differences in artifact styles are the result of different periods of time, and are not due to the immigration of new cultures into the area of study.

The term faunal dating refers to the use of animal bones to determine the age of sedimentary layers or objects such as cultural artifacts embedded within those layers. Scientists can determine an approximate age for a layer by examining which species or genera of animals are buried in it. The technique works best if the animals belonged to species that evolved quickly, expanded rapidly over a large area, or suffered a mass extinction. In addition to providing rough absolute dates for specimens buried in the same stratigraphic unit as the bones, faunal analysis can also provide relative ages for objects buried above or below the fauna-encasing layers.

Each year seed-bearing plants release large numbers of pollen grains. This process results in a "rain" of pollen that falls over many types of environments. Pollen that ends up in lakebeds or peat bogs is the most likely to be preserved, but pollen may also become fossilized in arid conditions if the soil is acidic or cool. Scientists can develop a pollen chronology, or calendar, by noting which species of pollen were deposited earlier in time, that is, residue in deeper sediment or rock layers, than others. A pollen zone is a period of time in which a particular species is much more abundant than any other species of the time. In most cases, this also reveals much about the climate of the period, because most plants only thrive in specific climatic conditions. Changes in pollen zones can also indicate changes in human activities such as massive deforestation or new types of farming. Pastures for grazing livestock are distinguishable from fields of grain, so changes in the use of the land over time are recorded in the pollen history. The dates when areas of North America were first settled by immigrants can be determined to within a few years by looking for the introduction of ragweed pollen.

Pollen zones are translated into absolute dates by the use of radiocarbon dating. In addition, pollen dating provides relative dates beyond the limits of radiocarbon (40,000 years), and can be used in some places where radiocarbon dates are unobtainable.

Fluorine is found naturally in ground water . This water comes in contact with skeletal remains under ground. When this occurs, the fluorine in the water saturates the bone, changing the mineral composition. Over time, more and more fluorine incorporates itself into the bone. By comparing the relative amounts of fluorine composition of skeletal remains, one can determine whether the remains were buried at the same time. A bone with a higher fluorine composition has been buried for a longer period of time.

Absolute dating is the term used to describe any dating technique that tells how old a specimen is in years. These are generally analytical methods, and are carried out in a laboratory. Absolute dates are also relative dates, in that they tell which specimens are older or younger than others. Absolute dates must agree with dates from other relative methods in order to be valid.

This dating technique of amino acid racimization was first conducted by Hare and Mitterer in 1967, and was popular in the 1970s. It requires a much smaller sample than radiocarbon dating, and has a longer range, extending up to a few hundred thousand years. It has been used to date coprolites (fossilized feces) as well as fossil bones and shells. These types of specimens contain proteins embedded in a network of mineralssuch as calcium.

Amino acid racimization is based on the principle that amino acids (except glycine, a very simple amino acid) exist in two mirror image forms called stereoisomers. Living organisms (with the exception of some microbes) synthesize and incorporate only the L-form into proteins. This means that the ratio of the D-form to the L-form is zero (D/L=0). When these organisms die, the L-amino acids are slowly converted into D-amino acids in a process called racimization. This occurs because protons (H+) are removed from the amino acids by acids or bases present in the burial environment. The protons are quickly replaced, but will return to either side of the amino acid, not necessarily to the side from which they came. This may form a D-amino acid instead of an L–amino acid. The reversible reaction eventually creates equal amounts of L–and D-forms (D/L=1.0).

The rate at which the reaction occurs is different for each amino acid; in addition, it depends upon the moisture, temperature , and pH of the postmortem conditions. The higher the temperature, the faster the reaction occurs, so the cooler the burial environment, the greater the dating range. The burial conditions are not always known, however, and can be difficult to estimate. For this reason, and because some of the amino acid racimization dates have disagreed with dates achieved by other methods, the technique is no longer widely used.

Cation-ratio dating is used to date rock surfaces such as stone artifacts and cliff and ground drawings. It can be used to obtain dates that would be unobtainable by more conventional methods such as radiocarbon dating. Scientists use cation-ratio dating to determine how long rock surfaces have been exposed. They do this by chemically analyzing the varnish that forms on these surfaces. The varnish contains cations, which are positively charged atoms or molecules. Different cations move throughout the environment at different rates, so the ratio of different cations to each other changes over time. Cation ratio dating relies on the principle that the cation ratio (K++Ca2+)/Ti4+ decreases with increasing age of a sample. By calibrating these ratios with dates obtained from rocks from a similar microenvironment, a minimum age for the varnish can be determined. This technique can only be applied to rocks from desert areas, where the varnish is most stable.

Although cation-ratio dating has been widely used, recent studies suggest it has potential errors. Many of the dates obtained with this method are inaccurate due to improper chemical analyses. In addition, the varnish may not actually be stable over long periods of time.

Thermoluminescence dating is very useful for determining the age of pottery. Electrons from quartz and other minerals in the pottery clay are bumped out of their normal positions (ground state) when the clay is exposed to radiation. This radiation may come from radioactive substances such as uranium,

Present in the clay or burial medium, or from cosmic radiation. When the ceramic is heated to a very high temperature (over 932°F [500°C]), these electrons fall back to the ground state, emitting light in the process and resetting the "clock" to zero. The longer the radiation exposure, the more electrons get bumped into an excited state. With more electrons in an excited state, more light is emitted upon heating. The process of displacing electrons begins again after the object cools. Scientists can determine how many years have passed since a ceramic was fired by heating it in the laboratory and measuring how much light is given off. Thermoluminescence dating has the advantage of covering the time interval between radiocarbon and potassium-argon dating, or 40,000–200,000 years. In addition, it can be used to date materials that cannot be dated with these other two methods.

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) has only been used since 1984. It is very similar to thermoluminescence dating, both of which are considered "clock setting" techniques. Minerals found in sediments are sensitive to light. Electrons found in the sediment grains leave the ground state when exposed to light, called recombination. To determine the age of sediment, scientists expose grains to a known amount of light and compare these grains with the unknown sediment. This technique can be used to determine the age of unheated sediments less than 500,000 years old. A disadvantage to this technique is that in order to get accurate results, the sediment to be tested cannot be exposed to light (which would reset the "clock"), making sampling difficult.

The absolute dating method utilizing tree ring growth is known as dendrochronology. It is based on the fact that trees produce one growth ring each year. Narrow rings grow in cold and/or dry years, and wide rings grow in warm years with plenty of moisture. The rings form a distinctive pattern, which is the same for all members in a given species and geographical area. The patterns from trees of different ages (including ancient wood) are overlapped, forming a master pattern that can be used to date timbers thousands of years old with a resolution of one year. Timbers can be used to date buildings and archaeological sites. In addition, tree rings are used to date changes in the climate such as sudden cool or dry periods. Dendrochronology has a range of one to 10,000 years or more.

As previously mentioned, radioactive decay refers to the process in which a radioactive form of an element is converted into a decay product at a regular rate. Radioactive decay dating is not a single method of absolute dating but instead a group of related methods for absolute dating of samples.

Potassium-argon dating relies on the fact that when volcanic rocks are heated to extremely high temperatures, they release any argon gas trapped in them. As the rocks cool, argon-40 (40Ar) begins to accumulate. Argon-40 is formed in the rocks by the radioactive decay of potassium-40 (40K). The amount of 40Ar formed is proportional to the decay rate (half-life ) of 40K, which is 1.3 billion years. In other words, it takes 1.3 billions years for half of the 40K originally present to be converted into 40Ar. This method is generally only applicable to rocks greater than three million years old, although with sensitive instruments, rocks several hundred thousand years old may be dated. The reason such old material is required is that it takes a very long time to accumulate enough 40Ar to be measured accurately. Potassium-argon dating has been used to date volcanic layers above and below fossils and artifacts in east Africa .

Radiocarbon dating is used to date charcoal, wood, and other biological materials. The range of conventional radiocarbon dating is 30,000–40,000 years, but with sensitive instrumentation, this range can be extended to 70,000 years. Radiocarbon (14C) is a radioactive form of the element carbon . It decays spontaneously into nitrogen-14 (14N). Plants get most of their carbon from the air in the form of carbon dioxide , and animals get most of their carbon from plants (or from animals that eat plants). Relative to their atmospheric proportions, atoms of 14C and of a non-radioactive form of carbon, 12C, are equally likely to be incorporated into living organisms. While a plant or animal is alive, the ratio of 14C/12C in its body will be nearly the same as the 14C/12C ratio in the atmosphere. When the organism dies, however, its body stops incorporating new carbon. The ratio will then begin to change as the 14C in the dead organism decays into 14N. The rate at which this process occurs is called the half-life. This is the time required for half of the 14C to decay into 14N. The half-life of 14C is 5,730 years. Scientists can estimate how many years have elapsed since an organism died by comparing the 14C/12C ratio in the remains with the ratio in the atmosphere. This allows them to determine how much 14C has formed since the death of the organism.

One of the most familiar applications of radioactive dating is determining the age of fossilized remains, such as dinosaur bones. Radioactive dating is also used to authenticate the age of rare archaeological artifacts. Because items such as paper documents and cotton garments are produced from plants, they can be dated using radiocarbon dating. Without radioactive dating, a clever forgery might be indistinguishable from a real artifact. There are some limitations, however, to the use of this technique. Samples that were heated or irradiated at some time may yield by radioactive dating an age less than the true age of the object. Because of this limitation, other dating techniques are often used along with radioactive dating to ensure accuracy.

Accurate radiocarbon dating is that diagenic (after death) demands consideration regarding potential contamination of a specimen and a proper application of changes in the 14C/12C ratio in the atmosphere over time. 14C levels can be measured in tree rings and used to correct for the 14C/12C ratio in the atmosphere at the time the organism died, and can even be used to calibrate some dates directly. Although the magnitude of change of the 14C/12C ratio sometimes stirs controversy, with proper calibration and correction, radiocarbon dating correlates well with other dating techniques and consistently proves to be an accurate dating technique—especially for Pleistocene and Holocene period analysis.

Uranium series dating techniques rely on the fact that radioactive uranium and thorium isotopes decay into a series of unstable, radioactive "daughter" isotopes; this process continues until a stable (non-radioactive) lead isotope is formed. The daughters have relatively short half-lives ranging from a few hundred thousand years down to only a few years. The "parent" isotopes have half-lives of several billion years. This provides a dating range for the different uranium series of a few thousand years to 500,000 years. Uranium series have been used to date uranium-rich rocks, deep-sea sediments, shells, bones, and teeth, and to calculate the ages of ancient lakebeds. The two types of uranium series dating techniques are daughter deficiency methods and daughter excess methods.

In daughter deficiency situations, the parent radioisotope is initially deposited by itself, without its daughter (the isotope into which it decays) present. Through time, the parent decays to the daughter until the two are in equilibrium (equal amounts of each). The age of the deposit may be determined by measuring how much of the daughter has formed, providing that neither isotope has entered or exited the deposit after its initial formation. Carbonates may be dated this way using, for example, the daughter/parent isotope pair protactinium-231/uranium-235 (231Pa/235U). Living mollusks and corals will only take up dissolved compounds such as isotopes of uranium, so they will contain no protactinium, which is insoluble. Protactinium-231 begins to accumulate via the decay of 235U after the organism dies. Scientists can determine the age of the sample by measuring how much 231Pa is present and calculating how long it would have taken that amount to form.

In the case of daughter excess, a larger amount of the daughter is initially deposited than the parent. Non-uranium daughters such as protactinium and thorium are insoluble, and precipitate out on the bottoms of bodies of water, forming daughter excesses in these sediments. Over time, the excess daughter disappears as it is converted back into the parent, and by measuring the extent to which this has occurred, scientists can date the sample. If the radioactive daughter is an isotope of uranium, it will dissolve in water, but to a different extent than the parent; the two are said to have different solubilities. For example, 234U dissolves more readily in water than its parent, 238U, so lakes and oceans contain an excess of this daughter isotope. This excess is transferred to organisms such as mollusks or corals, and is the basis of 234U/238U dating.

Some volcanic minerals and glasses, such as obsidian , contain uranium-238 (238U). Over time, these substances become "scratched." The marks, called tracks, are the damage caused by the fission (splitting) of the uranium atoms. When an atom of 238U splits, two "daughter" atoms rocket away from each other, leaving in their wake tracks in the material in which they are embedded. The rate at which this process occurs is proportional to the decay rate of 238U. The decay rate is measured in terms of the half-life of the element, or the time it takes for half of the element to split into its daughter atoms. The half-life of 238U is 4.47x109years.

When the mineral or glass is heated, the tracks are erased in much the same way cut marks fade away from hard candy that is heated. This process sets the fission track clock to zero, and the number of tracks that then form are a measure of the amount of time that has passed since the heating event. Scientists are able to count the tracks in the sample with the aid of a powerful microscope. The sample must contain enough 238U to create enough tracks to be counted, but not contain too much of the isotope, or there will be a jumble of tracks that cannot be distinguished for counting. One of the advantages of fission track dating is that it has an enormous dating range. Objects heated only a few decades ago may be dated if they contain relatively high levels of 238U; conversely, some meteorites have been dated to over a billion years old with this method.

Although certain dating techniques are accurate only within certain age ranges, whenever possible, scientists attempt to use multiple methods to date specimens. Correlation of dates via different dating methods provides a highest degree of confidence in dating.

 

[JohnD]

And you clearly think you know more than you do.

[ewq1938]

Cut it I half and count the rings...that's how old the Earth is, count the number for it is the number of a planet.

[OldCoot]

Problem with the dating methods is that they assume that Charles Lyell was right in his assertion on the Theory of Uniformity... that all processes were the same in the past as we observe them today.  Carbon dating has to rely on that presupposition to an extreme.  All we really know of earth processes is after the global flood.   And it is doubtful that what we observe today in earth processes was not even in play prior to the fall of Adam.  

And I think many take the Gap Theory the wrong way.  I see the dinosaurs and such as being prior to the flood, not prior to Gen 1:2.  A simple course in historical geology would bring one more to that conclusion.  Dinosaurs were primarily deposited in groups. Mammoths with fresh greens still in their mouths. That would be from a catastrophic event like land shifting and flooding.

Concentrations of mammoths in ice would suggest, along with a flood event, that the water canopy (the source of the flood waters) that surrounded the earth was depleted so quickly that it created instant freezing conditions.  Like releasing pressure from a aerosol can causes it to cool quickly and even freeze.   Pterodactyl physical makeup would suggest that they could not have flown in a atmospheric pressure of 14 psi that we live in.  It has been suggested that the water canopy that surrounded the earth and protected all life from cosmic radiation that led to extended life spans also generated a atmospheric pressure of about 26 psi.  It would take that for Pterodactyls to fly.  Neat thing, it also would have been the perfect conditions to virtually make asthma in humans something that didn't exist.    Drop the atmospheric pressure in half quickly and things are going to get pretty darn cold, fast, especially at the polar regions.

 And there are dinosaur tracks in limestone along side of human tracks, illustrating that shorter time periods should be in view.  The best example of how this could be the appropriate conclusion is a study of the Mt. St. Helens event in the '80's.   In a matter of days, petrified wood was evident along with those deposits in similar fashion.. upright thru multiple layer deposits... just like the Grand Canyon.  Even when I was taking my geology classes in college back in the dark ages... it was commonly known that petrified wood could be done in 30 days in the right mineral solution.

But Gen 1:2 does have a unique wording.  

Genesis 1:2 (NKJV) The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Actually the wording should be "became", per the Hebrew.  So there was something unique about the situation between V1 and V2, I would contend it was the fall of Satan and the angels that was going on and disrupted things so greatly as to cause the earth to become without form and void.   I am not sure even dinosaur remains would have made it thru that cataclysm, since it was extreme enough to cause the earth to be without form and void. 

There are many assumptions that folks have had for quite a while that are starting to look like swiss cheese.  The speed of light for instance.  It was shown, in the 1930's that light speed is not a constant.  That was neatly slipped under the rug until recent times when Barry Setterfield and Trevor Norman did detailed analysis on light speed testing from the 1700's to the present and showed that light had been slowing down.  And while that was going on, other nuclear markers had been increasing while Plank's constant remained the same.  It has been slow to be accepted, but many others are starting to migrate to that position also.  Heck, it took 50 years after Olaf Roemer determined that light even had a finite speed before the "objective" science community bought into it.

And the universal theory about red shifts in the light spectrum is due to the universe expanding.  But the interesting thing is, those shifts are quantized.... in discrete steps... as opposed to some sort of "doppler effect".  That would support the Setterfield/Norman contention that light speed is changing and blow up the idea that the universe is expanding.

And if the other radiometric characteristics have been increasing in lock step with the decrease in light speed, as Setterfield and Norman suggest, that would throw radiometric dating off.

Scientists are like anyone else.  They have their own little presuppositions and biases and cling to them like a cat on a mouse, and they have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into re-evaluting those presuppositions.